Some known vehicles carry cargo between locations for various purposes. This cargo can include a variety of bulk commodities moved about a manufacturing facility such as plastic pellets, glass beads, wet or dry chemicals, and the like. This cargo can also be the type considered as heavy haul bulk commodity such as grain, coal, ore, sugar, fertilizers, and the like. The vehicles can include wheeled hopper wagons or rail cars such gondola cars, all of which can be linked and assembled into trains of vehicles.
In order to unload the cargo from these vehicles, some vehicles have doors fitted to the bottom or sides of the cars of the vehicles. These doors are able to be opened so that the cargo can fall from the cars into other containers or a conveyor system. Using doors for unloading vehicles may be intermittent where the vehicle is stopped to open the door, or continuous where the door is opened while the vehicle is moving. Using doors for unloading increases the design complexity, weight, and unreliability of the vehicles due to hinges, latching mechanisms, door opening and closing mechanisms, and components used to seal the doors. For cargo that is in the form of small or fine particle size, sealing doors to prevent loss of the product becomes even more complex and costly.
Some other known systems for dumping cargo from vehicles are rotary dumpers that provide for moving the vehicle onto or within a rotating, device that inverts the entire vehicle. Rotary dumping places the complexity and reliability burden on the single, stationary rotating device leaving the vehicles to be relatively simple hoppers. For cargo transportation systems that may have hundreds of vehicles, keeping the vehicles simple results in superior cost effectiveness. Rotary dumping, however, is intermittent by its nature, which slows the overall dumping process and requires a means for proper alignment of the vehicle(s) within the rotating portion of the dumper. Intermittent dumping lowers the reliability of the vehicles in a consist (such as a train) due to starting and stopping forces. Rotary dumpers also require that the connections between the rotating and non-rotating vehicles in the train accommodate the rotation.
It would be desirable to have rotating dumping means that reduces vehicle complexity, yet allows continuous rather than intermittent operation.